


the song is ended (but the melody lingers on)

by Black_Hole_of_Procrastination



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-14
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 14:39:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4568256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Black_Hole_of_Procrastination/pseuds/Black_Hole_of_Procrastination
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"They pour into the Night’s Watch in a flurry of beads and feathers, a trio of brunette live wires that drink like fish and dance all night and don’t give names."</p>
<p>Swept up in the city's gin fever, Myranda, Mya, and Alayne begin sneaking out at night to go dancing. It's all harmless fun until Alayne meets a handsome bootlegger named Jon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the song is ended (but the melody lingers on)

Each time is the same. 

They pour into the Night’s Watch in a flurry of beads and feathers, a trio of brunette live wires that drink like fish and dance all night and don’t give names.

The city is filled to the brim with their kind. Bob-haired girls whose gall has gone up with their hemlines as they traipse unchaperoned into supper clubs and dance halls. 

These three are as wild as any. They flirt and smoke and steal drinks, sharing identical red-lipped grins meant only for each other. But more than anything else, they dance.  

In a fit of madcap delight they take to the floor, lighting up the joint as their feet fly in time with the band. Some nights they don’t even sit down, passing from partner to partner as if they’ll never stop. 

But they do stop. 

Long before the band sets to play a final number, they scurry off like three Cinderellas, ducking into a cab to disappear into the dim early morning. 

There is no slipper left behind for a persistent admirer to follow.  _There is not even a name…  
 _

* * *

 

Myranda will dance anything with anyone.

So long as a fella can keep time and won’t step on her toes she is content. At her age she’s learned not to be picky.

Myranda is seventeen when she marries.

She is in no hurry to marry, but Ernie is so sweet and shy, and she is still young and silly enough to be caught up in the notion of being a soldier’s sweetheart.

Father grumbles for weeks over the expense of the wedding, but that is forgotten when he gives her away with a watery smile, his whiskers scratching as he gruffly pecks her on the cheek.

She carries her mother’s prayer book and wears a new satin gown, her veil held in place by a pearl-studded headdress. Ernie looks smart in his new uniform as he shoots her shy grins from the altar. His hand does not leave the small of her back for the entirety of their wedding breakfast, earning them a few pointed looks from her maiden aunts, and making Myranda feel both giddy and wicked in turn.

They have a brief few weeks before he leaves for France. Silly as she may be, Myranda knows deep down those weeks may be all they have, and she tries to make them count. 

It is not a bullet or a mortar that takes Ernie. He makes it back safe to their crowded little flat on Upper West Side and (for a time) they are happy. 

Ernie is not elegant or charming like her girlhood ideal, but he is kind and he is steady. He puts up with her whims and allows her to drag him to parties hosted for artists and political refugees and all manner of people that would make her former governess’s hair curl. He tries to make her smile during society functions with his tedious colleagues from the bank, whispering jokes in her ear and squeezing her hand under the table. He begins to call her ‘old girl’, a name that feels strangely romantic when he is staring at her with a fond smile that sets her stomach fluttering.

Ernie dies in their bed. His heart, the doctors say. Myranda supposes she should feel mortified by the circumstances of it, but as the coroner carries out her husband’s body all she can think is:  _my life is finished_.

Myranda is twenty-three when she moves back into her father’s house. Father and Albar are welcoming enough, but she can’t help but feel like a bad penny that’s come back again.

Her world shrinks to an endless string of charity luncheons and teas. She is too young to be shuffled in with the stodgy wives of her father’s set, but with Mother gone and Albar still dragging his feet about finding bride she is the de facto lady of the house.

She is not suited for widowhood. Everyone treats her like she died along with Ernie, and if there is one thing Myranda cannot bear it is to be invisible. She knows she could marry again, but she is not sure she is suited for marriage either. Her years with Ernie were happy ones, but she can’t help but feel cheated out of her young years. 

One night it becomes too much. 

She casts off her widows weeds for an indigo beaded number she hasn’t worn in years and slips out the back way of her father’s townhouse. She walks three blocks before flagging down a cab, her heart lodged in her throat.

“Where can a girl get a drink and a dance?” she says, sounding bolder than she feels.

The cabbie takes a long look at her, sizing her up. She must meet muster, because he gives a nod before setting off.

The Night’s Watch is just the discreet sort of place she had in mind. Politicians rub elbows with gangsters. Faces of every color fill the crowd. She even spies two men dancing cheek to cheek in the shadows of the dance hall.  _A place made for looking the other way_.  

She is confident if any recognize Nestor Royce’s daughter or remember her from her debutante days in the society pages before the war, they’ll keep their tongues in hopes that she will keep hers.

By the time she lures Mya and Alayne into her nighttime escapades it has become old hat. They hop out of the cab and duck into the alley, nodding their way past the grizzled-looking doorman. Myranda leads the way, shepherding her companions inside the club with all the pomp of a parade marshal, her silver cigarette holder clenched in her teeth as they carve through the smoky crowd.

Mya and Alayne don’t linger by the bar for long, making for the floor as soon as they can scrounge up decent partners, but Myranda prefers to take her time. Satin, the dark-haired bartender, knows to keep a table empty for her where she likes to hold court. She flirts and laughs as men feed her gin and plead for dances, all the while keeping a watchful eye on Mya and Alayne from across the room. 

Surrounded by strangers with the band in full swing, is when Myranda feels at most at ease.

The Night’s Watch is home in a way her father’s house can never be.  
 

* * *

 

Mya lives for a Charleston.

She doesn’t even need a partner. Just the blare of horns from the bandstand is enough to send her scrambling for the floor, kicking up her heels and grinning.

By day, Mya prides herself in being all things Mr. Baelish appreciates in a secretary: discreet, efficient, invisible. But by night, done up in her glad rags under the dance hall lights, riding high on champagne and Charlestons, she is another creature entirely.  

Mya learns to dance in the empty ballroom of the Royce’s Newport house. Long summer afternoons are spent gliding along the parquet floors with Myranda’s clipped instructions cutting over the crackle of the victrola.

“You don’t have to pick up your feet so! It’s a foxtrot not a march!”

Mya always takes up the gentleman’s part to help Myranda practice for her first season of parties and cotillions.

She never quite breaks the habit of trying to lead. Most men don’t mind. Dreamy blue eyes and an impish grin are enough to have them lining up to be manhandled across the floor by Mya. 

On nights when decent partners are scarce, Mya boldly chats up girls at the bar until she can persuade one to join her for a Charleston or a quickstep. She goes for cool-eyed jazz dolls with long necks, girls who look like they’ve walked off the pages of  _Photoplay_  and who have a practiced hand at turning down dance partners. They don’t know what to make of Mya. Most titter nervously with their friends, but eventually one will roll her eyes and agree to one— _just one_ —dance, only to find themselves breathless and beaming by the song’s end and wishing for another.

Mya never dances with the same partner in one night.

“Don’t want to be seen getting too chummy,” she cautions Alayne who, for as skittish as she can be, is prone to getting too mooney-eyed over this fella or the next. Mya knows better.

Mya is used to keeping people at arms length.

Her mother is a housemaid for the Royce family who never had much time for a scab-kneed little girl getting underfoot. Mya doesn’t remember her father,  _the louse_ , and tries not think on it too much. Old Nestor Royce is more of a father to her anyhow. It is Mr. Royce who puts her through secretarial school and it is he who lines up the job for her with Mr. Baelish.  

The day after Mychel Redfort’s engagement to Myranda’s pug nosed cousin Ysilla is announced, Mya demands to go dancing. 

She stands waiting by the cab dressed in black trousers, her dark bobbed hair pomaded slick to her head. Save for her lipstick and the dark pencil around her eyes, she looks the part of a fresh-faced dandy.

“You look a scandal!” Myranda says, her tone somewhere between impressed and chastising. 

Mya shrugs, flashing a sharp edged grin. She winks at Alayne who flushes a pretty pink and can hardly look her in the eye for the rest of the evening.

The men don’t seem to know what to think of her, but girls are absolutely cuckoo for it, and Mya is not in want for partners. 

She dances like a fiend that night, pausing only to steal sips of champagne before taking off in a frantic whirl. 

She feels the weight of Myranda’s gaze on her more than usual, and she bristles under it. Mya wants to tell Myranda that she can keep her lousy eyes. She is  _fine_.

She knows all too well that tears don’t get you anywhere in this world.

You might as well dance.

* * *

 

Alayne loves nothing better than a waltz. 

She will dance a foxtrot or a Baltimore, even a Charleston when Mya drags her to the floor, her bangles jangling on her skinny arms as they jut into the air. But there is something wistful and old-fashioned about a waltz that makes Alayne feel like a heroine out of a novel. 

Her first night out she nearly loses her nerve.

She spends the hours after putting Sweetrobin to bed fiddling with her hair and applying rouge in the spotted mirror of her vanity, a dressing gown tied over her dress just in case someone should come to check on her. 

Midnight comes. 

In stocking feet she moves through the silent house and down the back stairs, her t-straps clutched to her chest with shaking hands. She pauses on the second floor landing making doubly sure there is no light coming from under Uncle Petyr’s door before tiptoeing the rest of the way. 

Myranda is waiting for her in the alley, and they hurry a block over to where Mya has a cab idling. Under the streetlamps she gets a good look at them both. 

Alayne is surprised by how different they look from the women she knows, and she is suddenly self-conscious about her dress. It is a pretty robins egg blue crepe, nicer than her linen day dresses and less restrained than the grey suit she wears to church, but compared to Myranda and Mya in their bright silks and spangles she feels like a charwoman. 

All worries of her dress are forgotten the minute they step through the door into the Night’s Watch. 

Alayne feels thrilled as she takes it all in. 

She doesn’t dance that first night. Instead she watches mesmerized as couples glide across the floor. 

It’s very different from the handful of stiff-armed dances she’s had under watchful society matron’s eyes. Men pull their partners in tight, their cheeks pressed close, their legs tangled together as they spin. 

Later, after she’s tucked back into the safety of her bed, she lies awake, the sound of trumpets and dancer’s heels echoing in her head.

Alayne sets to repurposing some of Aunt Lysa’s old dresses into evening wear. She is handy with a needle, and while the girl who once poured over the fashion papers with Jeyne Poole is long gone, she still holds an appreciation for pretty things.

Alayne is pleased with her efforts, though Mya badgers her to raise some of the hems. She refuses, not wanting to risk anything too daring. In spite of Myranda’s assurances that Uncle Petyr’s associates do not hang about places like the Night’s Watch, Alayne is cautious. She does not want to draw any undue attention.

In the end, fretting about the length of her hems matters little. Men flock around her in startling numbers to beg dances. She turns them down more often than not in the beginning, but this only seems to make them redouble their efforts. 

Myranda cautions that she will get a reputation for being too choosey if she goes on like this, but Mya smiles approvingly. 

“It’s best to stay a little cold,” Mya warns. “Men come and go. They lie, or die, or leave you.” 

It seems a grim line of thinking, but Alayne takes her words to heart.

Alayne bides her time waiting for the right sort men to ask her. She turns down anyone who seems too slick or too handsome. She is suspicious of charm, and prefers a good honest face to a chiseled jaw. 

When the right sort finally begin asking, she happily waltzes off in a twirl of satin and smiles. For one glorious moment she is not thinking of caring for her sickly little cousin, or Uncle Petyr’s scheming, or  _Sansa_ …

For one moment she is free.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope this was a fun read for you guys. I’ve wanted to write something with the Vale Lady Trifecta for a while, and this was too fun of a universe to pass up. It’s loosely inspired by the book ‘The Girls at the Kingfisher Club’ which is a Jazz Age retelling of the fairytale ‘Twelve Dancing Princesses’. Something about the idea of Sansa sneaking out on the sly to go dancing just tickled me. This is more of a prologue than anything else, and I won’t be able to touch this universe again until my fics for the Jon x Sansa remix are done but I promise the next update will be chock-full of bootlegger!jon. ;)


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